


A Grey Afternoon

by Talullah



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 04:19:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2177646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talullah/pseuds/Talullah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>B. ponders her decision to leave someone she loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Grey Afternoon

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was not betaed!
> 
> [Disclaimer/Blanket Statement](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Talullah/profile)

It's a cold, late afternoon with that northern grey falling on my heels as I enter an ensconced little bar in one of the side streets near the Stephansplatz. My lips twitch in a smile of pure pleasure as the warmth inside thaws my skin. I walk to a table, glancing around. It's yet another of those delightful little places with art-covered walls, windows that sift blue light in and a couple of elderly gentlemen in a corner. I cannot number how many of these bars I've been to, but I'm still surprised by how their uniqueness shines through the predictable similarities.

The waiter comes slowly to my table. He's a dignified fifty something who has learned the big secret: there is no rush, no rush whatsoever in this life. I'm still working that one out.

I smile and test my god-awful German, "Eine schokolate, bitte." He nods and I grin openly - he understood me. It's just a small triumph, so shallow and simple it should barely register, but I'm glad all the same. Joy is scarce these days.

I sit back, a residual grin still hovering about me and take out my Lorca. Yes, I know it's pretentious to read poetry in cafés, but I'm 23 - I'm allowed to be pretentious. The words bring me to a sunny, dry olive grove. In less than a week I will be back to my sun drenched home. Three months of cold, northern winter seemed to be more than I could handle but I was wrong: they went by in a blink. I close the book without finishing the poem; I already know it by heart anyway.

My schokolate is brought to me with the traditional glass of water. This is another of those little Viennese details I shall miss. That and the hyacinths for sale in the streets, a random band playing the Ride of the Valkyries while I do my Saturday morning window shopping, the Italian ice-creams in the small place near the Rudolfsplatz. Most of all I will miss him, the one I forgot to mention to my parents and to my friends. My little secret, my precious, little clandestine love.

I sigh and I play with the intact sugar packet, trying to think pink thoughts. I am fighting melancholy mightily, but here in the world capital of dusty old dreams it's an insurmountable task. I take a sip of my chocolate, feeling every last molecule imprinting itself on my memory. They don't have thick, dark chocolate like this at home. And they don't have tall, dark-haired men with large hands and warm smiles. Or maybe they do have them, but not the one I want.

When I was a child I wasn't allowed to pout and stomp my feet and get my way with it. I wish I could do it now. "Momma, buy him for me! I won't leave the store without him!" The very image of overgrown me in pig-tails and a bib makes me smile. Laughter is a life saver or so I've been told often.

My love, my sweet Peter, enters the café, sits by my side, bringing with him that cold air from the street, and kisses me. He takes his cold hand out of his wet gloves and lets me warm them. We sit in silence, fingers playing, smiles saying more than words could ever convey and then we leave for his room with its bared windows. We make slow, languorous love in his permanently unmade bed. This is but a waking dream, of course, brought on by that dowsing blue light.

He doesn't know where I am. My cell-phone is off and I left no message for him. I know it hurts him, that I have been drawing away, avoiding him of late but I am weak. I can't stand this tension that settled in the place of joy, smothering us.

I don't want to go home, not yet. I'm still calling his room home. It should have ended by now. It should never have started. Sex and friendship, that's what we had promised each other between air-depleting kisses in a dark alley with the snow sneaking in through our scarves, not this, not the sweet redemption, not this absolute, devastating need. We were sophisticated adults, weren't we? Surely it wouldn't have been so difficult to keep things whole, but we shattered into each other and now we're this kaleidoscope, our pieces mingled together, indiscernible. I cannot take myself out without cutting my fingers in the shards anymore than he can.

As much as I like my poetry, there is a real world where I am poor and took a mercenary students' loan. I can't go back and forth between countries without a job. I don't have the money for it and I can't ask it of my parents. I have to go back to finish my thesis. There's no way around it. This was a period of grace, nothing more. One must be thankful for the gifts life hurls at you, not duck them, or worse, try to turn them into what they are not. I try to be sage but I know these are just words detached from their meaning.

My chocolate is getting thicker and colder. If I keep turning the spoon at this speed there is a serious chance it will dissolve. I feel we are going around in circles in a labyrinth, passing the entrance every time but ignoring it. We won't leave until we're kicked out by the angry gardener and he's coming soon, I hear his footfalls. My fingers search for the plane tickets inside my corduroy purse, right next to the Lorca. Bloody mess. Bloody exchange programs. Bloody... everything.

Last Friday he offered me the map to the Grand Road of Everlasting Happiness: I would go back, finish my thesis while he would finish his and in six months I'd be back. Where would we find the money? Saving and borrowing from everyone, of course. With his plan we could pay back in less than one year and we'd only be left with my loan. For a math student he seems to misplace his numbers way too often.

He doesn't want to understand that I have to go back. My life is not my own, I owe to my family more than a few coins: I owe them love, respect, and loyalty. What sort of a person would I be if I left them now that my father is sick and my sister just starting university? Sometimes I think he doesn't really understand what it is like to have no money, none whatsoever.

I know that if I told my parents what is going on they would chose my happiness above everything else, and make more and more sacrifices for me, but I don't want that. I could never be happy like that.

He says that I could easily find a job here, maybe even as a waitress in the Bermuda Triangle if it came to that and we'd be alright, but he always chooses to ignore the obvious: it simply isn't enough to survive. It's a risk I can't afford to take. Besides the odds are not as favourable to me as he'd like to think them: three months weren't enough for me to bend this hideous language beyond a few basic sentences. I don't know how many more it will take. Compared to most students my age my resume is pitiable, even if the grades are not so bad. Meanwhile we will live of what? Air, dreams and love? That doesn't fill stomachs or pays debts, sorry. He should know that the pragmatist inside of me will always speak louder than the dreamer inside of him.

And he says that in the worse case scenario he could go back to Tyrol and find a teaching position or work in his father's farm. We both know that he hates it there, so intensely he even goes to the trouble of softening his accent. Could I condemn him to that? To be stuck in some dead end job in a place he hates?

He pleads, says that maybe it will take longer than planned but that I can always return. We just have to wait for each other and we will be fine. I shake my head: I don't want to hold him in some lonely promise. Maybe one day we'll meet again, unlikely as it seems. He doesn't understand fatality. I don't understand his impetus. I don't know how to fight everything and everyone. I am better at accepting.

He gets angry at me; he says I'm not willing to even try. I didn't know I could love him more but under despair he's sweeter to me, touches me deeper. And then I wonder what does he think these last few months have been for me. Is he right and he was nothing but a toy for me? Or am I just a coward, finding every possible excuse to end happiness here and now? Inside, everything tells me it's right to go and wrong to stay. I leave a few coins on the table and leave, heading home while it still is home. I can't force myself to imagine how it will be later, after.

 

_Finis  
July 2005_


End file.
